Complexity Management: Optimizing Product Architecture of Industrial Products

The discussion about increased product complexity in Western European companies has been omnipresent for decades. This is due to ever new demands (real or c- ceived) from the market and new possibilities (technical and others) open to the p- viders of products and services to come up fast with very specific solutions. The m- agement of this complexity inside the company so as to achieve a balance between the market benefits of more customer specific solutions and the internal costs induced by this is still a big challenge. After years of research in this area there is still a lack of tools to help practitioners to take decisions about the right degree of complexity for a product or the right design of a product architecture. Mr. Marti brings together three perspectives on this topic in an easily understa- able and communicable way: The strategy of the company (combined with the mat- ity of the product), the functionality, and the physical complexity on a component level. The visualization in a complexity matrix is an important new tool especially for fostering the understanding for complexity issues in a company! With this book Mr. Marti has come up with an outstanding contribution to product complexity management, which is crucial for the future competitiveness of companies in Western Europe. I hope that this book will find a broad distribution as well in pr- tice as in theory for the sake of our countries! Prof. Dr.